a) Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a fishing rod, in particular, an intra-line fishing rod which is structured such that a fishline can extend through a rod main body. The present invention also relates to a fishline.
A conventional intra-line fishing rod includes a fishing rod main body formed of a tubular member through which a fishline extends. On the other hand, an ordinary fishing rod includes fishline guides on the outside of a fishing rod main body through which a fishline passes. The intra-line fishing rod eliminates the possibility that the fishline can become tangled in the fishline guides, consequently operation of the intra-line fishing rod is improved over that of the ordinary fishing rod.
Conventional intra-line fishing rods have the disadvantage when winding a fishline out of the water the fishline brings drops of water inside the tubular member of the fishing rod main body. The waterdrops become attached to the interior surface of the fishing rod main body, consequently the fishline cannot be moved smoothly through the fishing rod main body due to the resistance of the waterdrops. Clearly, this impairs the operation of conventional intra-line fishing rods.
b) Description of Related Art
In order to address this problem, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei. 5-268858 discloses an intra-line fishing rod in which the interior surface of a tubular fishing rod main body includes thereon a resin layer containing fluoro-resin particles. Such an intra-line fishing rod improves the ability to repel water off the interior surface of the fishing rod main body by easing movement of waterdrops.
An intra-line fishing rod having the aforementioned resin layer facilitates movement of the waterdrops attached thereto, but cannot remove the waterdrops completely. Therefore, some of the waterdrops remain scattered on the interior surface. In this case, a "contact" angle .theta. between the interior surface and a line tangent to the exterior of a waterdrop (at the junction of the surface and the waterdrop) is in the range of 90.degree. to 110.degree.. Resistance to passage of the fishline through a fishing rod main body with waterdrops scattered on an interior surface having a resin layer is not always small when compared with a fishing rod that does not include the resin layer. Therefore, in conventional intra-line fishing rods, the fishline cannot be passed through the fishing rod main body to a satisfactory degree.